Canada – Perfect dejavue

We left UK and headed for Canada where cousin Pamela and Robin picked us up from Montreal and took us to Perth (Ontario). We had a relaxing couple of days to catch up before embarking on a three day boat trip through Ottawa. We took the boat for a quick spin before loading it onto the trailer and heading for a basin near Ottawa. We slipped the boat into the water where it then decided not to start. After a couple of hours of power boosting it continued to reject our starting attempts. A bit of dejavue given this happened the last time we visited Perth (see 2009 blog!). Robin was not impressed and vowed that this boat will shortly be traded in for a more reliable one.

We decided to continue with the trip by road and on foot. We stopped off at the Hilton Casino where the reception is decorated with huge Chihuly chandeliers. Impressive, but fortunately too large for our home.

The Hilton is built on the edge of an old quarry which now forms a lake and is part of the waterway system. The views were great. The second boat below was being towed so starting failures are not uncommon (well it gave Robin some heart). In the left background is part of a large pontoon where a firework display occurs every few days during August.

We decided to go on a 6 kms walk into town largely along the waterfront. It was a perfect day in the mid 20s.

We passed through perfect gardens.

And walked across the Alexander bridge with a view to the Canadian Museum of Civilization.

And in the other direction the locks leading up into the Rideau canal system which were overlooked by the Parliament buildings and old library.

After a great lunch by the canal we took a taxi back to the hotel, picked up the car and moved to our next stop at the Chateau. This is the largest log cabin in Canada. Set on the banks of the river Ottawa it is perfect.

Drinks on the bank at sunset were also perfect.

The reception is in the hub of the building which has a number of spokes leading off. These house the bedrooms. The centre piece of the hub is a huge chimney 3 floors high. It must be pretty warm in winter and the lighting gave it a very warm feel in summer.

We had a French waiter at our evening meal who asked the usual questions

How was your day? “Good” and received the response “Perfect”.
How was the wine? “Excellent” “Perfect”.
The food? “Very flavourful” “Perfect”.

We thought this was rather a quaint French mannerism. However, breakfast with new waiters was the same, checking out was the same. How was your stay “Very enjoyable” “Perfect”.

We decided on the way home to spend a few hours in the Canadian Museum of Civilization. The entry hall is huge and accommodates a number of totem poles.

The domed ceiling overlooking the atrium to the end staircase is particularly colourful.

We opted for the hall that takes you through a history of Canada. It comprises a series of scenes which you weave in and out of with every corner opening up to some new bit of history.

Of course the school room attracted particular attention – can you imagine teaching these two? Meanwhile Robin is flagrantly cheating.

The façade of the museum has a Guggenheim feel about it (see Bilbao blog 2010)

Outside there is a great view from the fountain across the river to the Parliament Houses.

On the way back to Perth we called into a Scottish restaurant. Again we were hailed with “perfect” so clearly this is the Canadian word of the year.

Pam and Robin ensured our stay in Canada was truly relaxing (just perfect) and prepared us for the long haul home. We plan to return as soon as the new boat has arrived!

Briançon, Narbonne and Paris

Our route to Narbonne was via a couple of nights in the French Alps. We went over the Col de Montgenevre which is some 1850 metres with spectacular views. What really took our breath away was all the writing on the road (Contador and the like) and we realised that Le Tour worked its way up this pass only a few days earlier. We did not see any Cadel signs but his name certainly gained a lot of print when he won the Tour and is the first Aussie to have done so. We saw him on a number of occasions when we followed the Tour in 2009 tour. After being runner up twice it was absolutely brilliant to see him win.
On the way down the pass we travelled through Briançon which is the highest city in France. It has three castles on adjoining mountains. One can imagine the frustration of being able to see the enemy but having arrows fall short!
One of the attractions of the old part of the city was its claim to the main road being divided by a “river”. Reality fell short of what I imagined.

After a brief day to recover we made our way down the mountain, picked up Steve and Jilly (from the USA) at Montpelier enroute to Narbonne. It was Nancy (my cousin’s birthday - one of those decade ones) and hence we had three days of frivolity and rather too much eating and drinking. Nancy and Sasha have an interesting house but at this time of year the place to be was in the garden under the dappled light of trees. While Nancy focused on her presents.

Some had to man (person) the barbeque – a demanding job!!

While others (Steve and Jilly who appear to be needing to be introduced to one another) patiently waited for the food to be ready.

After three days of frivolities Nancy decided we should take in some of the local interests. We started at a winery (where else?) and then to the Gaul village of Enserune which was inhabited between 6th century BC and 1st century AD. This overlooks a huge agricultural development. The area was a lake which was drained and developed into a large series of fields in a circular fashion. The scale is enormous and can be appreciated by the lines of dividing trees some of which are many metres high. All this built with the tools and techniques available at the time.

Our return route from Narbonne to Paris took us over a modern day engineering feat – the Millau bridge. This is quite spectacular notwithstanding that in this picture the light on the cables make it look more like an artist impression than a real bridge. It is the tallest bridge in the world with the summit of one mast at 343 metres and with the underside of the deck level some 270 metres above the ground it is the 12th highest bridge. It is 2460 metres long.

Apart from the statistics, what is particularly interesting is that the conventional way of launching the bridge deck using rollers was likely to put to much horizontal load on the very slender and tall columns. A new launching system had to be invented. This used a moving wedge between two fixed bearers. The middle wedge was pushed thereby lifting and moving the bridge deck forwards. The wedge section was then lowered and left the deck on the two side supports. When the wedge was withdrawn so was the horizontal load. This system advanced the bridge 600mm (and repeated at a rate of 9 meters per hour). (This is the problem with an engineer writing a blog!)

We also had time for a lunchtime stop at a chateau. We spotted it just off the road and it was lunch time. Unfortunately I did not note the name and as the only tour was around the grounds and in French we meandered around on our own and omitted to collect a pamphlet.

Our trip to the Fontainebleau caravan site went better than expected and we were in time to participate on a meal at the Chez Fernand restaurant that is situated on the waterfront and was the same one we visited with Lianne and Glen in 2009.

After a lazy start we slowly made our way into Paris and as the weather was forecast to be poor decided to visit the Louvre. We had an early lunch (15:00 so it was for us) and suitably refreshed headed into the museum.

There is so much to see… We visited on a Wednesday which was late night closing. We saw the Mona Lisa – bit of a scrum to get close with so many people but we did get a photo. There are many works of art which from my perspective were far more interesting. This is one by Pannini called the Galerie de vues de la Rome antique -1758. The level of detail of each of the paintings within the painting is very fine. It measures some 3 x 2 metres to give help give a feel of the scale and the level of detail.Although we spent most of our time in one hall (Italian painters) I did flit through to the Greek hall to photograph the Milos de Venus. Three hours later we had seen 1½ halls. We will need to go back.
We left Steve and Jilly in Paris and the following day headed for the ferry and returned to Solihull to pack up the ‘van. A very short European trip of 5 weeks had flown past.

Malcesine, Verona and Veneza

We planned to stay the longest part of our trip based on Lake Garda. We had been here in 2003 and had always wanted to come back. We stayed at Tonini camp site which is 2kms North of Malcesine. The site overlooked the local landing strip for Paragliders (please keep off the grass!). There was the potential to participate in a twin glide but unfortunately we ran out of time. It is now on the bucket list.
The site was set amongst olive trees overlooking the lake. The owner had been generous enough to provide us with a double site due the size of our van and awning.

The town is topped with a castle and when we arrived Red Bull had taken over the place and were holding a cliff diving competition.

Awesome to watch and about 50 metres high – definitely not on the bucket list! (He did dive and I have a series of photos of him in the air.)

The town is picturesque from most angles and even with low light on a cloudy day is very colourful.

Picture postcard shots were not hard to find…

We hap planned to go to Venice and Verona during the week. Our initial plan to go to Venice first was thwarted due to very heavy traffic getting away from Garda. We subsequently found out we had selected the first day of the Italian school holidays to travel and decided on the shorter trip to Verona. This is a beautiful city and we took the two bus trips around the town. One of them included a stop at the Castel S Pietro which gives a great view of the city. Here is Duomo, Verona’s cathedral which was started in 1139 and the Ponte Pietra.

The Ponte shows some decorative architectural flair viewed this time from the West bank.

A focal point of Verona is the opera which is held in the enormous Roman arena. This dates back to AD 30 and is the world’s third largest amphitheatre (after Rome and one near Naples) and hold some 5000 people (nearly the whole town when it was built). There are a range of operas held over the summer and each stage is lifted in using a fixed tower crane. The props for shows are in a holding area just outside the arena walls.

We were able to get some tickets for Nabucco. As we had a little time before the performance start at 9:30 (and finishing 12:30 ish…) we decided on a leisurely dinner. The drink and food were great. Sue and I had a little fun stunning the occasional wasp and then wrapping them in a shroud (paper knapkin). We were not always successful with our first strike and this caused us some amusement. The Americans on the adjoining table were also bemused by the fact that we played with wasps. However, they quickly understood our lack of fear when they realised we were from Australia where there were snakes and crocodiles.

Inside the arena is stunning. Nearly all the seats were taken (and this is a nightly affair) and many of the crowd were extremely well dressed.

The opera used the whole of the stage area and the steps of the arena behind the stage. There were over 200 performers and the acoustics were wonderful notwithstanding there was not a roof or microphones.

At the end of the opera the stage effects included the building blowing up with great light effects and nitrogen “smoke”. The effect was added to by nature as a large thunderstorm built up over the last half hour. We managed to get back to the car before it rained notwithstanding that we stayed until all the singers had taken their numerous bows (unlike many of the occupants of the up market seats in the middle of the arena who exited as soon as the opera finished – pretty rude from our cultural perspective).

We got back to camp at 3:00 and decided on a lay day!!

We then took off for our postponed trip to Venice. It is impossible to do this city justice in a short blog. There is just too much to see and do. We were directed to a large new car park and after devouring our packed lunch took off on the ferry into the city. The Piazza San Marco was packed with people. We were very lucky as the weather was unseasonably cold (low 20s and humidity) which made the whole day a joy (compared to our last visit when it was 35 and 100%).

Some of the buildings have wonderfully restored paintings. The scale and detail is hard to appreciate in a photo.

Even some of the less well known buildings date back to the 1200 Byzantine period.

There are three modes of public transport - ferry, water taxi or gondola. Some of the water taxis are immaculate.

This is Gondola park – chaotic but a good deal of fun. I had always thought that Gondolas had an unusual lean. What I had not realised until this visit is that they are asymmetric with the left (sorry port) side longer than the other so as to counteract the force of the oar and stop the gondola going round in circles.

Helen had always wanted to go on a Gondola so another item off the bucket list.

We found a colourful restaurant in one of the more hidden squares. The waiter was a character and the menu included lobster in a mild curry sauce and also mushroom risotto with truffles. The latter were shown to us. I am not sure whether it is the glorious but strong smell of the Truffle or the waiter that is getting up Sue’s nose. We did have a lot of fun and great food.

We took one of the last ferries back to the car and headed back to camp – another late finish (2:00).

At the back of Marcesine was a different sort of Gondola. Helen and I travelled up to the top of Monte Baldo which at some 1800 metres is a skiers paradise in winter. Even in summer it was quite a bit colder and blowy than by the lake. I chatted with a Swiss girl who had been paragliding for 3 years while she prepared her equipment. With a pleasant au-revoir she gently ran forward and took off into the spectacular view. This summarises Malcesine for me, great panoramas and paragliding. Helen and I both plan to come back.